When Temple remained silent, Molina nodded at Ferraro-- great, they were in cahoots--
who went to open the door into an adjoining empty office.
Except the room wasn't empty until the man inside it walked out to join them. He struck her as a nondescript middle-aged man in a nondescript gray suit from Men's Warehouse, with a tie equally as off-the-rack, but his blue-striped shirt had a sparkling white collar. Another cop? With a subconscious urge to make a fashion statement while taking hers? Oi, her aching ankle!
Despite his snappy shirt, the new man didn't bother to say hello. He came right up to her with a grim expression, pulled a leatherette case from his inside breast suit pocket, then flipped it open in front of her nose.
Darn. Temple was too curious not to look. An unflattering head shot. An impressive seal.
Lots of tiny print.
"FBI" Temple read the big blue initials aloud to make sure that she wasn't having a dyslexic episode and it really said IBM. She wasn't. ''You've got to be kidding!" She glanced to an impassive Molina.
The man shook his head so slightly Temple hardly saw it. He wheeled a secretarial chair over the tiled floor, then sat opposite her.
''We need to talk," he suggested.
"I can do that. I could even do a song-and-dance until a couple of days ago." To demonstrate Temple hefted her still-swaddled ankle, which reposed on a pulled-out desk drawer. "So how have I offended this time?"
Amusement flickered behind the stiff, burglar-bar eyelashes shading his steel-gray eyes.
Flickered and went out.
''Apparently you're a repeat offender around this town," he said dead-pan.
''Only at being innocent," Temple replied.
"Unfortunately, she is. So far." Molina had vouched for Temple out of the blue, sitting on the edge of the desk. "Harmless, I mean. Miss Barr's only crime has been acting as a magnet for trouble."
"Murderous trouble?" the FBI man inquired.
Molina nodded.
"Is this about that dead man that fell on the craps table?" Temple dared to ask.
Lieutenant Molina pounced like Midnight Louie on a trespassing cricket unwise enough to announce its presence with a friendly chirp. "You understand something about that we should know?"
Of course Temple did. However, she wasn't about to announce to all and sundry that the second casino murder victim was also connected to a man of her acquaintance. In fact, the Crystal Phoenix victim was much more certainly attached to Matt Devine than the long-dead unidentified man at the Goliath was affixed to Max Kinsella.
While Temple stonewalled, internecine rivalry saved her.
The FBI agent shook his head at Molina, as if to shut her up, before concentrating the full power of his drill-press gaze on Temple. "The murder is . . . under control, Miss Barr. This interview concerns that skit you wrote for the Gridiron."
"My Gridiron skit? You've got to be--" She decided not to accuse the man of kidding again.
He didn't look like he had a sense of humor large enough to permit a discreet chuckle.
None of them looked particularly amused. Temple glanced from one sober official face to the next, searching for a quirk of the humanity that she knew had to be there. It was absent without leave in every case.
"My Gridiron skit?" Anxiety had pushed her voice into its froggiest register. "It's just the usual satire."
Ferraro edged closer, until he hung over the FBI man's gray wool blend shoulder. "What's so funny about the mob taking over a major Vegas hotel?"
"I made that up. I was playing on tired Vegas cliches."
"'You and somebody else," Molina put in darkly.
Temple jerked her head in that direction. Maybe she could get a little female solidarity going here. "That's what I do. I'm a PR person. I make things up. Based on the facts, of course, but I slant 'em and spin 'em and shake 'em up until they stand up and sing 'Dixie.' My skit merely exaggerated that sort of thing. Humor is exaggeration. Nothing in that skit is reality-based in the slightest."
''We're pretty sure," Molina said ponderously, more for the benefit of her colleagues than Temple, "that the Goliath murder a few months back was part of whatever caused this later murder, part of the same conspiracy."
"Conspiracy?" Temple squeaked. She knew that racketeering and conspiracy were charges that fell under FBI jurisdiction.
The agent nodded, watching Temple like a hawk would if she were a rainbow trout skimming too close to the surface. "I understand that you were associated with the suspected mastermind of the Goliath . . . incident."
Max? Oh, come on. "So then I went and spilled the whole scheme in a Gridiron skit, which the entire town will see in a couple of weeks? I don't think so."
"You're working at the Crystal Phoenix now," Molina pointed out helpfully.
"Yes, I am."
"Where another dead guy," Ferraro growled, "dropped from the Eye in the Sky like a crocodile tear."
Temple frowned. Same M.O., all right. "You . . . think whatever was up at the Goliath is gonna go down"--God, what a trendy expression!--"at the Phoenix!"
Her last supposition brought nods all around, whether of agreement or simple satisfaction that Temple had committed her thoughts to incriminating sound bites was debatable.
''Somebody up there''--Lieutenant Molina's luxurious eye brows lilted toward the ceiling--
''certainly doesn't want your skit, or you, doing business as usual."
"This skit is harmless fun," Temple protested again, truly confused, not to mention worried by this triumvirate of solemn law enforcement types.
"You haven't lived in Las Vegas very long," Molina informed her, "but let me assure you that
'fun' here isn't always as harmless as you and twenty-four million other tourists would like to think. Las Vegas isn't Wonderland, or even Disneyland. It makes its money from the art of separating ordinary people from an extraordinary amount of money by wrapping the process in expensive, glitzy paper. All of these architecturally overblown hotels, the acres of neon, the new virtual reality amusement attractions add up to a multimillion-dollar carnival midway that stays in one place. And that gives the sideshow operators very high stakes in the Las Vegas image, especially now that family-rated entertainment is becoming the name of the marketing game.
You don't survive in this billion-dollar melee without a lot of brass, especially on your knuckles.
And you don't tweak the tails of these sacred cash cows without risking an annoyed kick or two. In this town, you don't kick sand in the Sphinx's face and you don't step on an Elvis imitator's blue suede shoes."
Temple contemplated the blank white ceiling to which her attention had been drawn by the notion of a "Somebody Sinister Up There" who didn't like her. That "Somebody" apparently hadn't liked the two dead men, either. She frowned.
"So something in my skit riled some power-that-be in the bottom line?"
"Could be," Molina folded her arms. "Or it could be that whoever's behind these hotel deaths is making the accountants nervous and your skit is the straw that broke the camel's back."
"Whoever's doing this serial hotel killing is certainly fond of heights," Temple admitted. "So you believe the plunging UFO was cut loose by the same person?"
"Person," Ferraro growled, "or organization."
'The Mafia?" Temple felt numb with disbelief. "That's another cliche so antique it could be marked up quadruple and furnish a national landmark."
''Not necessarily," Ferraro added. 'The notorious godfathers may be an endangered species nowadays, but that doesn't mean that crime kingpins don't exist. They just don't get the colorful press they used to. The newer gambling areas are having the kind of trouble with organized crime we licked years ago. Then there's always the flashy foreign models--the Japanese Yakuza and the Russian mob are real bad news."
"Who would take my spoof seriously except somebody who was seriously disturbed?"
Temple persisted.
"There's that, too," Molina conceded.
"You mean a nut case--?"
Molina turned to retrieve a sheaf of papers from the desk behind her. "A nut who's decided to follow the plans you so thoughtfully laid out in your sketch." Molina slapped the papers to the desk again, close enough to Temple that she could recognize the familiar lines of her Gridiron skit. Who had given the cops a copy?'Did the initials "C.B." ring any bells, Quasimodo?
Temple shook her head, a mistake. The gesture brought her glance to the FBI agent, who was leaning forward in his borrowed chair. His no-nonsense eyes focused on Temple as if they hoped to rivet her to the wall.
"What about your veiled allusions to all those classified black projects at Nellis Air Force Base?" he wanted to know.
"Just that. Veiled allusions to what every TV tabloid show has been dredging up for years.
Next you'll tell me that someone's trying to resurrect Elvis, too!"
"Well ..." Ferraro began.
Temple couldn't stand it.
"Not . . . yet," he conceded with reluctance.
"I can't believe that you people are getting all excited about something I made up. Okay."
She eyed Molina. "My mob takeover scheme does seem a bit close to your speculations about the deaths of the two men in the casinos, but it's pure coincidence. Can't you see that I went through a catalog of all the old fish stories about Las Vegas and put them together into one big, unlikely bouillabaisse?"
''And can't you see, Miss Barr,'' the FBI agent answered her, ''that Las Vegas is a crux city where a ton of money and motives meet every day? Can't you see that an international clientele moves in and out of this town like a plague of locusts. The opportunity for big-time crime here is nothing to joke about. If you had any sense, you would jerk the skit from the show."
"What are you all? Shills for that miserable Crawford Buchanan? He'd love to cut my skit at the last minute, but Danny Dove would go ballistic if he lost his major number."
"Danny Dove?" The agent repeated the name with distaste as much as disbelief.
"An eminent local choreographer," Molina explained, "now directing, this comedy of errors."
"A stage name, surely," the agent persisted.
Molina shrugged, but Temple jumped to Danny's defense.
"Absolutely not. He got that handle when he was born in Norman, Oklahoma, longer ago than he's willing to put on a resume. I happen to know that for a fact, because I did freelance PR
for the Sands when Danny was setting up the original staging for their big 'Sands of Time' floor show."
The agent blinked, obviously flummoxed by the nitty gritty of Las Vegas entertainment.
"Whatever Danny Dove's antecedents or reaction to losing your literary efforts," Molina put in, "it's pretty clear that your imagination has irritated somebody besides the local constabulary.
We can't force you to do as we suggest, but we can cover this production like a London Fog shrouds a flasher. And we will have to, if nobody else is to get killed, especially you."
"You can't believe that these backstage mishaps were meant to harm me?" Temple was incredulous. "How could anyone determine when I would go up those steps, or that I'd use the handrail?"
Molina's eyes dropped to the site of Crawford's continuing inspection, for a quite different reason. "Anybody familiar with your footwear could figure that you would hang onto something when climbing those steep, concrete stairs in high heels."
'*What about the footloose UFO?" Temple asked. 'That thing could have smashed half the chorus, too. Isn't that overkill, even for Las Vegas? And who was to know that Crawford would be up on stage, and make me play bell ringer, the jerk?"
"There could be two scenarios," Ferraro suggested from his corner. ''One to take you out, and one to disrupt the production itself. Maybe they coincided. Either way, someone besides us doesn't much care for your script-writing."
"I invoke my freedom of speech." Temple folded her arms. "Besides, I think you're paranoid, which was part of my point in the skit. Pretty soon you'll hatch some notion that Elvis was secretly freeze-fried at death and is being brought back as an assassin for Castro."
Nobody smiled. That was the trouble with pursuing a career in law enforcement, Temple decided right then; all that martial arts practice destroyed the funny bone. She'd better cut back, fast.
They could do nothing, of course, even with the mighty FBI on the case, except interrogate, suggest and warn.
By the time Temple limped out of the barren office, a crowd of worried supporters had mustered in the narrow hallway. Actually, it was composed mainly of Fontana brothers, but they added up to a crowd all by themselves.
Danny Dove was eyeing Temple's limp. "More ice, more rest," he decreed.
Temple nodded meekly. Her ankle was throbbing almost as much as her head.
"We'll see her home," Ralph declared, promptly bending to hoist her like a Barbie doll.
Van von Rhine stood next to her husband, her arm threaded through his, her porcelain brow ruffled with worry. She walked out with the airborne Temple and her flock of Fontanas.
"Temple, that woman lieutenant had some rather worrying words with me. I told her that the hotel had been the victim of malicious pranks before, but she thinks this outbreak could be much more lethal. She pointed out that it already has been, in fact.''
Temple could only agree. "Do they know anything more about the man who was killed?"
Nicky broke his polite silence. "Some small-time low-roller. A drunk and a woman-beater. In other words, a loser hardly worth killing, unless he knew something uncomfortable to somebody. I'm thinking the cops are right about a possible takeover scheme."
"Oh, Nicky, no!" In her distress. Van stopped walking.
Fontana, Inc., too, stopped on a dime, which meant Temple was jerked to a halt that was rather hard on her ankle. Though elevated, it was not stable enough to withstand sudden changes in direction.
"Ow!" she complained without thinking.
Everybody tsked in concert. Danny would have been proud of them.
''It's not for us to do the police's work." Van patted Temple's shoulder. ''You go home and get a good rest."
Temple nodded, unwilling to debate everybody. She had some heavy thinking to do, anyway.
Nicky and Van peeled off. Temple was left wafting along in her flock of Fontanas. They cut such an impressive swath through the casino that slot junkies actually stopped their button-pushing long enough to look up.
Temple felt like Snow White among an unnaturally elongated squad of dwarves. Yet she liked the new vistas afforded by being carried along at a tall man's chest height, a mobile and human Eye in the Sky.
My, she could look down rows of slot machines, spot Hester Polyester and the Leopard Lady working the few one-armed bandits left, like laundresses chained to shiny chrome wringer-washers.
She could literally oversee the craps tables, and eyeball the balding heads of the ardent worshipers at the temple of snake-eyes and naturals. Had anyone ever done a study: craps and male-pattern baldness?
She could gaze into the hotel's lobby area, to view hordes of tourists lined up to check in and then check out the tables, the shows, the what-have you, and in Las Vegas, you could have almost anything . . . legal or ought-not-to-be.
She could even overlook the lobby bar's indoor greenery, laced with garlands of twinkling fairy lights, and glimpse a dark head weaving among the towering ficus trees with a certain, unmistakable liquidity of motion, like a tiger through the jungle . . . no, more like a panther, black and stalking, with unearthly green eyes--
''Hey!" Temple tried to climb the current Fontana brother's broad, broadcloth shoulder.
''Hey, you there!"
You there, you with the stars in your eyes.
That was her. Blinking. Seeing fairy lights. Thinking. Thinking that she had seen . . . no . . .
glimpsed--Max. Max Kinsella, don't you know? Alive and moving, bold as brass and as big as a Broadway opening when there's standing room only.
&
nbsp; Temple discovered that she couldn't stand on a Fontana brother's shoulder, despite the awesome padding, not with her weak ankle and deluded eyesight.
"Miss Barr?" Her custodian was confused, and his suit was getting wrinkled. "You don't want to scramble around like that. You could aggravate your foot."
She could aggravate her entire life. Temple settled down and smiled apologetically at her forehead-puckering escort squadron.
"Sorry. Thought I saw someone . . . suspicious."
"Where?" they demanded en masse, noses lifting like bloodhound muzzles.
Fee, fie, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an Irishman, Be he live or be he dead, I'll follow his trail from A to Zed,
"I was wrong," she apologized hastily, though she was not sure that she was. Even Max Kinsella deserved a less public unmasking than by a baying flotilla of Fontanas on his heels.
"I suppose," she said with maudlin determination, "I need to go home, to Tara, and rest until tomorrow, which, we all know, is another day.
And frankly, my dear, she added internally to the fleeting image she had perhaps seen, I don't give a damn.
The Fontana brothers, with the exception of the one toting her, clapped politely.
Temples Vivien Leigh imitation had been spot on.
Chapter 23
Louie of the Lake
What could a woman with a weak ankle, frazzled from an interrogation by two homicide detectives and an FBI agent, better wish to carry her home than a silent, gentle glide on a magic carpet? Swing low, sweet chariot.
cat in a crimson haze Page 19
